Can John Cusack ever top his terrific teen trilogy?

In the past 20 years, John Cusack has been a distinctive presence in everything from noir thrillers to action blockbusters. But it's the bittersweet rom-coms of the 80s that will ensure his screen immortality

Can John Cusack ever top his terrific teen trilogy?

In the past 20 years, John Cusack has been a distinctive presence in everything from noir thrillers to action blockbusters. But it's the bittersweet rom-coms of the 80s that will ensure his screen immortality

Is there a fortysomething man out there who doesn't think John Cusack represents all that is finest in our benighted gender? If so, I don't want to meet them. "The Cuse", as he's known universally on the Film & Music desk, is one of those rare beasts: a grade-A thespian who can also effortlessly trigger the sappier emotions like empathy and affection.

Rather neatly, his film career divides into three 10-year chunks. In the 2000s, things have been tricky: he's tried to become an orthodox movie star and after a promising start with High Fidelity, he ended up doing lame rom-coms and (aargh!) a John Grisham. The 1990s saw his high-water mark as an "interesting" actor; he had the luxury of picking projects of all different types, and a large proportion were bona-fide successes as he bounced from the neo-noir of The Grifters, to a Woody Allen alter-ego in Bullets Over Broadway, the backwards-looking retro of Grosse Point Blank, the blockbuster attack of Con Air, and the surreal weirdness of Being John Malkovich.

But it's what Cusack did in the 1980s that really put him into the memory lobe of an entire generation. He staggered out of the Brat Pack thicket (after bit parts in Class and Sixteen Candles) to headline three of the greatest teen movies of the era. He was still a teenager himself when he scored the lead role in The Sure Thing, Rob Reiner's follow-up to This Is Spinal Tap. If you don't know it, Sure Thing is one of those classic rom-com set-ups – two people who hate each other, but through enforced proximity and untutored charm, evolve through mild dislike to genial acceptance to full-blazing hots. The genius premise – the keeper-aparter, if you will – is the Cusack character's obsession with a no-strings encounter (the "sure thing") for which he is prepared to travel across the entire continental US. We know, though, he's such a useless horndog that it's a futile quest, and that prim-but-loosening-up Daphne Zuniga is his destiny. It may sound a bit like a Seann William Scott movie, but The Sure Thing is so sensitively observed, and with the kind of finely drawn characters (male and female) that teen movies left behind a long time ago, that its emotional intelligence comes roaring out the screen.

Cusack's second great teen movie, Better Off Dead..., is practically its diametric opposite: a grab-bag of scattershot gags, silly drawings and stoner sniggers. The vision of one man, oddball animator "Savage" Steve Holland, Better Off Dead... is the kind of thing the Zucker brothers might have come up with had they tried to make a John Hughes movie. If that makes sense. There's a teen romance (of a sort) but it's pretty perfunctory; Better Off Dead… is more accurately described as a teen suicide comedy, as Cusack repeatedly tries to end it all after being dumped by his girlfriend. But surreal jokes – and plenty of them – are Holland's real preoccupation; he'll shove them in wherever he can. Cusack's bete noire is the school skiing champ Roy Stalin. His blow-obsessed sidekick (played by the legendary Curtis "Booger" Armstrong) drops to his knees when they go on the slopes, shouting: "This is pure snow! Do you have any idea what the street value of this mountain is?". Then there's the Korean kid who talks like sports commentator Howard Cosell... Through it all, Cusack maintains a wholesome ironic distance, making sure we know he's not as dopey as the story, and is as smart as the wit.

Cusack subsequently let it be known that he was no longer interested in teen movies (preferring to work with Paul Newman, John Sayles, William Hurt and other titans of the American art movie. But fortunately he was talked back into the genre for 1989's Say Anything…, the directorial debut of Fast Times at Ridgemont High scribe Cameron Crowe. Though it came very late to the teen-movie party, Say Anything is its Citizen Kane, its Vertigo, its Raging Bull. Perhaps that's a little over the top. But Say Anything is still, by some distance, the most literate, humane and morally astute of the 1980s teen-movie cycle, one that has most serious claim to being watched as an "adult" film. (I'd contend that one of the reasons why 80s teen movies are still so watchable is many of them are considerably more sophisticated than much of the stuff aimed at the over-20s – then and now.) John Cusack's Lloyd Dobler carries the spirit of his Sure Thing and Better Off Dead characters – all three are damaged outsiders who have a sense of humour about it – and welds it to an ambitious narrative about emotional longing, parental betrayal, and the struggle for human connection. If you don't remember it as being that good, then watch it again. Cusack has made many fine movies since, but I doubt they'll be as fondly remembered.